Fred Glass. Beer. Lemonade. Saltines

I’m in a bit of an excitement crevasse right now. There’s not much that’s moving the needle for me with IU sports. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about our performance at Duke, Tom Crean’s assertion post game that the game plan, by and large, is not to play help defense, our complete dominance over Non-State State teams, like Alcorn and Morehead, and what the 2011 UK wins means now, four years later. But none of them has crystalized into 500+ words full of rational or entertaining thought, so I’ve let them simmer a bit.

And then I read a quote today in a piece by Zach Osterman of the Indianapolis Star by IU Athletic Director, and guy I’ve seen eating at The Irish Lion, Fred Glass. (You can read the whole piece here.) The piece starts like this:

“Shortly after Indiana’s win at Purdue sealed the Hoosiers’ bowl eligibility, Director of Athletics Fred Glass, asked if he had a preferred postseason destination, deadpanned that bowl games are ‘like cold beer.’

‘There’s not any bad ones,’ he said.”

I’m pretty sure the article is about IU fans in the New York area and how they’re excited about the Pin Stripe Bowl. I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t get past the quote.

First some Fred Glass context that doesn’t involve Puff Balls.

Adam is still mad at Fred Glass for promising him free lemonade and not delivering. This all happened a few years ago and it had to do with an IU football promotion the specifics of which I don’t recall, but Adam was expecting a free lemonade and did not get one. And now, Adam wants that lemonade like the kid in Better Off Dead wants his two dollars.

So, indianauniverse has beef with Fred Glass, whether he knows it or not, whether it’s valid or not.

Let me first speak from experience. Has Fred Glass never had Coors Extra Gold?!?!

There was a part in college once where Coors Extra Gold was my 9th beer of the night, a point in the evening when I assumed my taste buds were effetely dead, or at the very least on strike. And it was the nastiest thing I’ve ever tasted, and that includes things made with mayonnaise that has gone bad.

Coors Extra Gold is too gross to be your 9th beer of the evening.

But I wanted to see a. if it was still in production and b. what it’s rating was on beer advocate. The answers to those questions, in order is, seemingly, inexplicably, yes and 67 – poor.

Which made me curious as to what was the worst rated beer.

And it’s not Natural Light, which is the 2nd worst rated beer on beer advocate.

No. The worst rated beer is, and I have to warn you, the name of the beer itself may make you throw up in your mouth a little bit. My apologies:

Bud Light & Clamato Chelada.

And it’s what you think it is. Bud Light and Clam Juice.

As bad as that sounds, how’s this for some context. The Weighted ranking for Bud Light and Clamato Chelada is 1.85. Natty light is 1.86.

So, Fred Glass is 100% wrong about there not being a bad cold beer.

And he’s also wrong about there not being a bad bowl game. There are 40 Bowl Games and all of them that don’t lead to the national championship are completely meaningless. So, there are at least 37 Bowl Games of no consequence whatsoever, and at least ten named after crappy chain restaurants that are bad. And however many Bowl Games there are that inviting teams with 5-7 records are awful.

But there’s an old Eddie Murphy stand up routine that appropriated for our setting today basically goes like this.

“You know why you think this Bowl Game’s good? Because you waited 8 years for it. If you’re starving, and someone gave you a cracker, you’ll be like goshdarnit, that’s the best cracker I ever ate in my life! That ain’t no regular cracker was it? That wasn’t no saltine was it?! That was a Ritz! That wasn’t a Ritz?! That was the best cracker I ever ate in my life!”

I’ve got nothing against The Pin Stripe Bowl in as much as if it weren’t for being in a hotel with Penn State fans last Christmas who were playing in a Bowl Game in Yankee Stadium that, now, in retrospect, I understand to have been the Pin Stripe Bowl, I wouldn’t know there was such a thing as the Pin Stripe Bowl.

It’s a fine Bowl. Kinds cool it’s in Yankee Stadium. I’m glad we’re in a Bowl Game again. It’s certainly better than every other year when we aren’t in a Bowl game.

And while the Pin Stripe Bowl most certainly isn’t Bud Light & Clamato Chelada, it isn’t Bourbon County Rare 2015 either. It’s whatever the beer version of Saltines is, good for what it is, but nothing you’d go out of your way to find, like Blue Moon, maybe. Something like that? Something you have to add something to make it something you’d actually enjoy.

Like a Saltine needs some cheese, a Blue Moon needs an Orange, and the Pin Stripe Bowl needs IU football.